DOJ backs soccer dads who stood up for daughters

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said last week that the Department of Justice will look into a district court ruling against two fathers who silently protested a male player on a girls’ soccer team playing against their daughters’ team. “This DOJ stands with women and their supportive parents,” Bondi posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Kyle Fellers said his daughter, now in high school, has played soccer since she was 3 years old, even overcoming hip dysplasia to do so. Playing against a boy felt all the more unfair in the face of her hard work, he said.

“She was delayed in crawling and in walking but recovered and loved kicking the ball around the yard,” Fellers told WORLD via email. “I didn’t think it was fair or appropriate for a biological boy to just decide to compete against girls.”

Fellers’ daughter now plays soccer for Bow High School in Bow, New Hampshire. When he and another father, Anthony Foote, learned that a high school boy who identified as a girl played on an opposing team, the two fathers decided to stage a silent protest. During a game last September, they wore pink wristbands decorated with two black X’s to symbolize female chromosomes.

But school officials demanded that they remove the wristbands. When the men refused, noting their First Amendment right to wear them, the district temporarily banned them from attending games. Fellers and Foote filed a lawsuit on Sept. 30, arguing that the school weaponized student protection policies to censor free speech.

Last week, a federal judge ruled against the parents, finding that the school could suppress their speech to protect students from “harassment, intimidation, and anxiety.” The judge’s decision temporarily bars the parents from being able to engage in further silent protest at school events. It also denies their request for a preliminary injunction to temporarily allow them to continue their silent protests at school events while the case proceeds.

In the lawsuit, the parents said a Bow Police Department officer at the game threatened them with arrest for trespassing if they kept the wristbands on. When Fellers refused and cited constitutional rights, the officer told Fellers that he was not entitled to free expression because the school grounds were private property.

Within days after the game, the school district superintendent mailed Fellers and Foote “no trespass orders,” preventing them from watching their daughters’ games, including the homecoming game. The superintendent alleged the parents led a protest to intimidate and harass an opposing team member.

While officials later lifted the order, Fellers and Foote remain unable to silently protest on school grounds—including at Fellers’ daughter’s swim meets and lacrosse games this spring.

Officials claim the father’s protests violate school policies against harassing and threatening behavior. But in a November hearing, the men testified that they had no intentions of harassing or targetting soccer player Parker Tirrell, the boy who identified as a girl on the opposing team.

The fathers contend that their behavior was non-disruptive and allowed on public school grounds under the Supreme Court’s 1969 ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines. They also said the school has engaged in viewpoint discrimination by only prohibiting speech on one side of this issue.

“I believe very strongly in free speech and, just like the other side has a right to their argument, I do as well,” Fellers said. “I may not agree with the other side, but I support their right to express their opinion and beliefs without being targeted or harassed or censored.”

U.S. District Judge Steven McAuliffe sided with the school, stating the school officials have an obligation to protect students from “adult speech that can reasonably be seen to target a specific student participating in the event.” He found that the school district’s suppression of speech and regulations governing conduct at games was reasonable and viewpoint neutral.

McAuliffe wrote that, while Fellers and Foote “may very well have never intended to communicate a demeaning or harassing message directed at Parker Tirrell or any other transgender students, the symbols and posters they displayed were fully capable of conveying such a message.”

Brian Cullen, an attorney for the school district, said he doesn’t see the ruling as “particularly controversial.”

“It simply prevents adults from harassing students at school events,” he told WORLD. “Plaintiffs and others may continue to protest or express their views on this and other issues in a host of other forums.”

However, Institute for Free Speech attorney Del Kolde, who represented the parents, said the decision represents an outlier in First Amendment cases.

He said most judges would have found that the school engaged in clear viewpoint discrimination by prohibiting speech on just one side of this issue—he cited that the school has allowed an LGBT pride flag to be displayed on its grounds. Additionally, most judges typically give more protections for adult speech.

Kolde also noted that Judge McAuliffe heavily leaned on a June 2024 ruling from the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which found that a middle school student did not have a constitutional right to express his opinions through his attire at a Massachusetts school. The 1st Circuit upheld Nichols Middle School officials’ March 2023 decision to force then-12-year-old Liam Morrison to leave school for the day after he refused to stop wearing a T-shirt that read, “there are only two genders.”

Kolde said that McAuliffe issued a troubling extension of the 1st Circuit’s ruling, pushing it to apply not only to students in the classroom but also to parents on school grounds.

“Civil rights are not self-executing,” Kolde said. “If you let the government tell you that you cannot quietly express an opinion like this … what’s next?”

Minutes after Attorney General Bondi’s post on X last week, Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, echoed her statements in a separate post.

“This ruling is unconstitutional and will not stand,” Dhillon wrote. “Every father has not only a right but also a duty to stand up for his daughters, and the right to free speech is not curtailed by subjective ‘feelings.’”

As of Friday, Kolde said that, while the DOJ had not yet contacted him or the fathers, they plan to appeal their case to the 1st Circuit.

“I remain committed to protecting not only women’s sports but also free speech,” Fellers said. “Support from friends, family, and people within the community … has been a source of inspiration and hope. But, most importantly, utilizing the big guy upstairs for prayer and guidance and strength when things don’t go our way.”